There is a strong presumption among economists that domestic reforms are promoted by regionalism. Yet strong empirical evidence for this proposition is lacking. This paper examines both the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence on this issue, drawing on the relevant economic,...

Australia and the United States signed a bilateral trade agreement in 2004. This paper analyses the provisions of the agreement, compares the provisions with other bilateral and multilateral agreements and comments on the modelling that the Australian Government used to estimate the likely...

Economic integration should not be an end in itself, but the outcome of domestic reforms that increase the general contestability of markets. The paper finds that for India, comprehensive domestic regulatory reform dominates as an integration strategy, while an ASEAN+6 PTA would fail to deliver...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is to determine empirically whether there is a unique regional model of foreign direct investment (FDI) somewhere in the AsiaPacific region, driven by complex network behaviour of multinational corporations. The second is to determine empirically...

Two propositions appear to be gaining wide currency, given the revealed preference for preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the East Asian region and elsewhere. The first is that economic integration is a good way to promote economic growth. The second is that PTAs, particularly ones that go...

Although the overall economic performance of economies in South Asia in recent years has been impressive, there is concern that an aging and increasingly inadequate infrastructure may limit the potential for further growth and economic development. A critical infrastructure component is the...

In the paper we discuss China's participation in both the 2009 Copenhagen negotiations on a post-Kyoto global climate change regime currently under way and out beyond Copenhagen in further negotiations likely to follow. China is now both the largest and most rapidly growing carbon emitter, and...

This paper discusses both the potential contribution that trade policy initiatives can make towards the achievement of significant global carbon emissions reduction and the potential impacts of proposals now circulating for carbon reduction motivated geographical trade arrangements, including...